Hi boys! Listening lots of tracks from big labels you can hear such a big nice and full sounds...spread in all frequency range and with an incredible loundness and 'punchness'. I'm trying to copy that style but it seems very difficult!
I tried to compress some frequency bands and put a 'noise pluck' in my layering to give more punchness to my sounds and that problem were solved. But it still sounds closer that other songs!

So,
How can i increase the loudness and the sound-shaping of sounds? it depends mainly from VSTs or mixing processes?
I use Sylenth1, have i to use Spire/Serum to come up with?

Thanks AudioSex!

 

To make sounds thick expriment with different kinds of saturation and compression.
To make em BIG spread the stereo width. You can use stereo plugins to widen it, but it also depend on your source. Is your source mono? Different approaches to different sounds.

A micro delay 2-20 ms on one side ( I delay the right side just cause it sounded better to me, but try both sides one at a time) is the most often approach in EDM. I use this for the lead type in front sounds with different delay settings from 2-20ms for each sound depending on how big I want it.

TIP #1 DONT OVER DO IT!

 

Last edited: Jan 17, 2017

At least 4 layers from the realm of EQ'd and distorted (Soundtoys Devil-lLoc/Decapitator): plucky timbres, pianos, detuned and lowpassed supersaws, white noise - all with different widths so they cover the entire spectrum as a whole. Further processing is short dense reverb (so short, you can't hardly tell is there when listening someone else's music), tape saturation (iZotope Trash 2), transient shaping, clipping (this one's essential as you need a shit load of RMS, compression alone is not cutting it anymore), parallel multiband compression (Xfer's OTT) and finally some mild compression, parallel compression or both. Takes a while to nailt it, though.

 

I think it's more important to write a memorable hook. What difference does it make how loud you can yell if you don't have anything interesting to say?

 

Yes and layers. All EDM these days is layered like crazy. My snares have 4 layers. The last pluck I made had 7 panned to different parts left and right and saturated, eqed, compressed, and multiband limited. Crazy stuff in there too. Like a bamboo hit with a metal hit and a 8 bit bleep a snare some whitenoise etc.

 

It is easier to distinguish a solo voice than a choir.
More sounds, less definition.
Everything will depend on the final sounds.

Although at the moment it seems that it is necessary to create layer for all the sounds ....

 

the list of things to do to try to get a "big" mix is a long list. A lot of tools now to help. Phase analysis, masking meter, and spectrum analyzers are nice tools to have. Parallel compression is a good thing to understand. How you filter things like reverb and high and low pass filters for different instruments makes a huge difference. It just goes on and on.....Tutorials like "5 minutes to a better mix" (but there' about 60 of them now, I think.) really do help, and of course, you need a refined ability to really listen to hear all the subtle things going on (or aren't). Experience counts there.